Saturday, June 22, 2013

Second time is a charm

Heather Cessna won in State v. Beye, No. 105,087 (Kan. App. June 21, 2013)(unpublished), obtaining reversal of a Wilson County drug conviction.  The COA had originally rejected Mr. Beye’s Fourth Amendment claim based on an intervening circumstance of discovery of an arrest warrant.  The KSC remanded the case for reconsideration in light of State v. Moralez (blogged about here), holding that discovery of an arrest warrant is of minimal importance in attenuating the taint of an illegal arrest.  After reconsideration, the COA  applied Moralez and held that there was  no significant temporal break.  The COA also held that the misconduct was flagrant:

Like the facts in Moralez, we find that by keeping Beye's driver's license with no reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, the stop was transformed to a suspicionless investigatory detention. Accordingly, Allen acted flagrantly by conducting the warrant check. Therefore, the third factor weighs slightly in favor of suppression here.

As a result, the COA held that the illegal detention required suppression.

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